At some point our technology is going to become self-aware and possibly take over the world, enslaving humanity, at least, that is what science fiction has taught us. Some of the information that we’ve been hearing about the upcoming generation of consoles, PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720, seems to hint at us moving in that direction as we hear words like “always on” and “mandatory” thrown into the mix. Without a doubt there are some great features that come packaged with those words, but others are enough to throw the gaming world into a frenzy.
The latest comes in the way of rumors about the upcoming Xbox 720 system. According to the latest bit of news from VGLeaks, from information taken from dev kits, it looks like the next Xbox (Xbox 720/Durango) will feature an always on internet connection, to keep everything updated and for ease of playing. On top of that, some of the cool features that have been available will soon become mandatory, which are great in theory, but could cause some issues down the line. Those features are installing games to the hard drive and the Kinect peripheral.
There are some pros and cons to be weighed with each, as launching a game off of the hard drive is without a doubt quicker and less painful, but I’ve yet to really see a console launch with a hefty hard drive capable of holding a ton of games for an affordable price. Then there is the Kinect being a mandatory thing, which at times is nice. It is nice for me to be able to say, “Xbox, Pause” when I’m watching a movie, so I don’t have to turn on my controller, wait for it to connect, then press pause. On the other hand, there have been talks about the Kinect being used for DRM scans and that is not good for anyone. I guess we’ll just have to wait for more information on the Xbox 720.
